Termination Shock

“Shotguns,” T.R. pronounced them. “Our boys trying to take out drones.” He listened a little more. “That there was a pistol round.” He looked down at the others. “Much as it shames me to run from a fight, I do believe we should descend farther. You okay, Saskia?”

“Perfectly fine, thank you.”

“So why don’t let’s get comfy and you pop the clutch again and—”

“Sir?”

Conor had slid back down into his squat and was poised to touch two stripped wires together, which Saskia knew would lead to another drop. But he was looking at T.R. who had held up a hand to signal wait just a sec. T.R. had turned his face upward and opened his mouth. He was listening. So they all listened. Gunshots were still popping off here and there. But something very weird could now also be heard. It was a woman’s voice, electronically amplified, speaking calmly: “Place your weapons on the ground and lace your fingers together on top of your head. Proceed in the direction indicated by the green arrow.” Though they had to listen for a while to completely decipher it, the same announcement seemed to be emanating from multiple drones in different places at different times.

“Sounds like a fucking airport,” T.R. remarked. His eyes rotated down toward Saskia. “Would you call that an Indian accent? As in, from India?”

They all listened to a few more repetitions of the message.

“Definitely,” Saskia said.

“I concur, Your Royal Highness.” He looked at Conor. “Hit it.”

 

Conor had to “hit it” at least a dozen times before they got to the bottom. Toward the end he was just tapping the wires together for the briefest instant possible, producing a series of jolts that dropped them only a meter at a time. But he didn’t have to explain that this was preferable to slamming full-tilt into the bottom of the mine shaft. When they got to within about a meter of the Level Zero lift stop, all aboard wordlessly agreed that this was close enough, and that clambering down the rest of the way was preferable to the sickening lurch-drop-jolt of “popping the clutch.”

Conor did the thing that caused the door to open. They looked out into the side chamber at Level Zero, which Saskia had last seen the better part of a year ago, on the day the gun had first been fired. It looked the same, just a bit more lived-in. Conor climbed down to the floor and helped T.R. out. Both men then made a show of trying to help Saskia until she pointed out that they were merely getting in her way. Waiting for them was Jules.

Though partly obstructed by all manner of plumbing and mechanical equipment, the whole length of the shaft from here up to the surface was basically open. Air and light could filter up and down it, and sounds echoed down from above. At this distance they would no longer hear the Indian lady delivering her calm but firm instructions. Gunfire was audible, though. As before, that was sporadic. The shots seemed to come fewer and farther between as time went on.

“What’s going on up there?” Jules finally asked.

Saskia realized he hadn’t seen the drones or heard the voice. “It sounded to me,” she explained, “as if drones were being used to somehow round people up and march them off.”

“Off to where?” Jules asked. It was, come to think of it, a perfectly obvious and sensible question.

Saskia threw up her hands. “Not here.”

Jules was stricken, obviously thinking that he should have stayed behind with Fenna. “What’s wrong with here?”

“This may become a question of some relevance to us,” T.R. remarked.

 

The image stabilization system in his fancy binoculars was on the fritz. To get a steady view of what was happening down on the mesa, Rufus had to go full Stone Age, holding them down on an outcropping of rock near the summit of the peak. The distance was so great that the binoculars weren’t a huge improvement on the naked eye. Every few minutes a purplish star would ignite at the base of a net stanchion and burn for a couple of minutes. Then that pole would fall inward. One by one the nets were hitting the ground.

Pina2bo had stopped firing shells around the time of the flash—which as near as he could tell had detonated in the sky right above it. But there would still be dozens of shells in the air, spiraling down out of the stratosphere beneath their parasails. Under normal circumstances, they’d be talking to systems on the ground that would tell them which net to aim for. Rufus didn’t know what happened in the case when a shell couldn’t phone home. It was maybe kind of an interesting question but not the thing to be focusing on right now.

Pools of light were gliding around the mesa in an orderly way, sometimes preceded by—unless his eyes deceived him—huge glowing green arrows. He could not make out what it was they were illuminating, but a reasonable guess would be people. They converged on one location in the facility’s parking lot: a ring of green laser light surrounding a lit-up circle. People were being herded and penned, he guessed.